Celebrating its recent AASHE STARS Platinum rating, the university unveiled a new interactive website that communicates its sustainability ecosystem using rotating info-graphs, videos and research stories in a user-friendly format.

The university will have a series of events designed to help participants improve their diet and reduce carbon emissions associated with food. The events will feature plant-based dishes and prizes for attendees.

Students recently organized a series of panel discussions for interested participants to discuss what role food choices can make in fighting climate change. Called the Brandeis Food Tank: The Think Tank on Food and Sustainability, the series explored food production, insecurity, waste, diets and education.

The university's Office of Sustainability partnered with the Surfrider Foundation to install new ashcans in an effort to curb cigarette butt litter and pollution. The containers will be monitored by students who will send the butts to a recycling company, TerraCycle.

With funding from a community engagement grant, the university's learning garden received new infrastructure from leftover renovation materials and is used to grow food as donation crops and rented by community members.

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and Coalition of Urban Serving Universities awarded nine public urban research universities a total of $450,000 to launch or expand pilot programs that inhibit low-income college students nearing graduation from dropping out. The recipients are Cleveland State University, Florida International University, Kent State University, The Ohio State University, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, University of Central Florida, University of Houston, University of North Carolina, Charlotte and Wayne State University. The APLU and USU released a report on the success of these micro-grants at 10 universities that includes an implementation guide for universities.

The Harvard Corporation has approved the recommendation of the Harvard Law School Shield Committee to retire the HLS shield, which is modeled on the family crest of an 18th century slaveholder, Isaac Royall. Because of its ties to slave labor, the shield came under fire in October 2015, when a group of law school students formed "Royall Must Fall" to demand that HLS discontinue using the Royall family crest as its symbol. The HLS has the opportunity to propose a new shield.

Twelve projects, about half of which were student proposals, recently received grant funding from the university’s President’s Advisory Council on Sustainability. Funded projects include increasing sustainability awareness, performing environmental research, presenting research at academic conferences and making direct environmental impacts on campus. Funding preference was given to those projects that involve and benefit students, are linked to an academic class offering experiential learning, provide long-term campus benefits and address the university's Climate Action Plan.

The university's Idea Lab, an initiative that seeks collective input to shape the trajectory of the university, now includes the Hopkins Eco-Smart Acorn Grants. This new challenge provides an opportunity to identify and submit ideas that advance the university's mission to encourage responsible actions that prioritize people, natural resources and finances to safeguard the health of future generations. The other two challenges of Idea Lab are community and diversity.

Student participants of the 2015 Greenest City Scholars cohort have worked with the city of Vancouver on specific sustainability projects including water and food challenges. The projects target the city's ability to be resilient in the face of climate challenges. Since 2010, the Greenest City Scholars Program has brought together a total of 79 graduate students from the University of British Columbia.

The university recently launched a crowdsourcing contest to identify projects that reduce campus emissions and highlight the potential for scaleable, educational solutions as a living laboratory. The challenge is part of a new series of contests launched by the MIT Climate CoLab, a crowdsourcing platform of over 50,000 members. The series seeks high-impact proposals that tackle major climate change challenges.

Thanks to a new blog, the RHEAL Deal (Residential Healthy Eating and Living Deal), university student nutrition assistants communicate weekly posts highlighting healthy items in the dining commons. The blog posts include information about the nutrients in the featured food, different ways it can be prepared and where it can be found in the dining commons. Food that meets the healthy qualifications of RHEAL are also marked by a carrot icon on the entrée card.

A Bee Campus USA certification now adorns the university after the campus developed a Pollinator Protection Plan for its 1,200-acre landscape that includes locally native and pollinator friendly plants.

After a three-year effort, the university's Smeal College is now adorned with the USGBC LEED-EB (Existing Building) Gold certification. Since the building will need to be re-certified every five years to keep its designation, business building will act as a living laboratory for students to conduct research and participate in experiential learning.

Two of four of the university's Introduction to Sustainability courses provide students with the opportunity to partner with the university's Recycling Center team to conduct a hands-on waste audit of a campus building. The Recycling Center team will use the data to improve signage and outreach materials.

The Records and Information Management, and Policy Coordination Office sponsored a Disposition Day event, offering secure shredding and recycling of confidential and restricted paper documents to university business offices. This year, 10 offices participated and 5,034 pounds of paper were securely recycled.

The community college recently announced its acquisition of the Bee Campus USA certification. In keeping with certification, the campus implements an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plan, staff are regularly trained on best IPM practices and chemical use, and the college is expected to use signage in appropriate places that explain the role of pollinators. There are currently plans to develop a Campus Pollinator Habitat Plan.

Beginning in fall 2016, the college will offer two new living, learning communities for incoming freshman. The Sustainability Living Learning Community will focus on management of environmental and financial resources, and finding harmony with the natural environment. The Social Justice Living Learning Community will enable students to engage diverse perspectives and views, critically examine issues that cause oppression related to race, gender, age and other differences, and form connections to other community members interested in social justice issues.

Climate scientists, policymakers and practitioners, including former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, recently participated in a national conference on climate science and climate change. Presented by the divisions of Social Sciences, and Physical and Biological Sciences, the theme of the third annual climate science & policy conference was Earth's Climate Future: Uncharted Territory. Three panels focused on public health, geoengineering and geopolitics.

The Student Sustainability Center has launched a new seed library where any university student, staff or faculty member can take free seeds to plant and grow. Participants are invited to harvest seeds from the plants they grow and return some of these next generation seeds to the library for others to borrow and to keep the library going. The 2016 seed inventory includes 270 different seed varieties.

One of the largest campaigns hosted by the university's Sustainability Initiatives is underway for its ninth year, the Kill-A-Watt Energy Conservation Competition. This competition uses scholarship incentives (up to $750) to encourage university residents to lower their energy consumption over a two-and-a-half month timeline.

National Campus Leadership Council recently announced the six sites to host a 2016 Climate Leadership Summit as Arizona State University (April 16), Cal Poly Pomona and Claremont McKenna College (April 22-23), Florida International University (April 30), Georgia State University (April 6), and University of Wisconsin-River Falls (April 9). In partnership with Defend Our Future, the regional summits provide a platform to address energy challenges and climate change.

In the works for nearly two years, the university recently set aside a one-acre plot for the Student Farm Club to grow food and operate a community-supported agriculture program for three years. The farm will operate as a laboratory where students will have the opportunity to study food production and marketing.

The university's first Make-a-thon, a 45-hour challenge to create solutions to campus sustainability challenges, brought together 42 students on 11 teams to compete in one of three categories: energy, waste or water. Armed with actual campus utility, waste and recycling data, student teams researched, designed and prototyped sustainability innovations. Some projects may get funded through the university Sustainability Fund.

About nine percent of freshmen indicated in a recent annual survey that they have a very good chance of participating in student protests while in college, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from last year's survey, reported Inside Higher Ed. Conducted by the American Freshman Survey, the survey collected responses from more than 141,000 first-year students during their first few weeks of college.

This new program offers university departments and offices the opportunity to gain recognition for sustainable practices already in place and learn additional sustainable practices. The program is entirely voluntary and requires buy in from the majority staff and faculty in each unit applying. Scoring is tiered and based on level of difficulty to achieve certain tasks in categories including energy conservation, waste reduction, recycling, communications, and occupant health and comfort.

Opened in summer 2015, the organic garden has six beds for student teams to grow edible plants and vegetables. One member of each team is required to attend a bi-weekly workshop to learn various gardening techniques and skills. The garden was funded by the student sustainability fee.

After three semesters researching and mapping the university’s sustainability network of over 700 staff, faculty and undergraduate and graduate students, the university's Graduate Sustainability Group has launched an interactive Emory Sustainability Ecosystem map. The map affords current and future community members interested in sustainability an avenue to identify a range of existing initiatives to plug into their work. The map is freely available on the Graduate Sustainability Group website through a project that was funded by the Emory Sustainability Incentives Fund.

The Sustainability Committee of the State University of New York (SUNY) Student Assembly recently passed the resolution calling for all campuses to "gauge, monitor, and enhance the overall sustainability of its campuses and entities" by using AASHE STARS as the standard. The resolution calls for campuses to maximize each category with the intent of obtaining a Gold rating and potentially allowing campuses to be awarded grant money through Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), a New York State clean energy initiative that aims to spur clean energy innovation.

The newly released video mentions the university's commitment to discontinue the use of coal on campus as a fuel source, the acquisition of $170,000 in sustainability research funding, and the on-campus green office certification program had 193 spaces reduce their environmental footprint.

The university recently announced the winners of its inaugural Energy Innovation Award and Student Solar Design Competition that dispensed $11,000 in total prize money. The competition tasked interdisciplinary student teams with designing cost-effective, energy-efficient and design-centric solar installations for a campus landscape. Each project was evaluated for creativity, design, application and entrepreneurship with the intent of challenging participants to push the boundaries of clean energy innovation.

Launched in October 2015, as part of the university’s centennial celebrations, the Sustainability Challenge has fifteen interdisciplinary teams actively developing solutions across four priority areas for campus sustainability: sustainable food, climate action planning, waste management, and well-being and physical activity. Student teams will present their solutions to a panel of judges who will evaluate the projects and award cash prizes to the top three teams.

The university's Environmental Club received honorable mention in the innovative sustainability initiative category from the New Jersey chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council for its Earthship project proposal, an off-the-grid structure built from recycled tires that are pounded full of dirt. If completed, the Earthship would be the only one on a university campus.

On November 8, a group of four Harvard Resource Efficiency Program members joined 141 other college students at Connecticut College to learn, discuss and explore best practices. Commons themes that arose throughout the day included diversity and personal definitions of sustainability.

In this celebratory 10-year anniversary video of the campus sustainability movement, Meghan Fay Zahniser, AASHE's executive director along with Judy Walton, AASHE's founding executive director, Leith Sharp of Harvard University, Debra Rowe of U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainability Development and Fahmida Ahmed at Stanford University share thoughts about their vision for the future.

The new high tunnel plot allows produce and learning to happen beyond the short Minnesota growing season by using solar energy. Heated air is pumped underneath the soil, extending the growing season for months.

In an effort to reduce waste from on-campus events, the university's sustainability office initiated the new Spartan Green Event Certification that uses an online form to evaluate several areas. Events that adequately meet the criteria receive a certificate and a seal for marketing purposes.

Four university students that recently received a $4,000 UC Global Food Initiative (GFI) fellowships for the 2015–2016 academic year will be involved in one of the ongoing university GFI projects, which include efforts to address food equity and improve food security for students on UC campuses, and to increase opportunities for experiential learning at the campus’s farm and gardens.

The student group Sustainable Spartans actively engage in spreading achievements in campus sustainability and, by way of research, develop practical solutions that can be implemented across campus. Recent projects include a solar-powered picnic table and a festival celebrating the campus' organic farm. Future projects include rain barrels and improving local food options.

Beginning in fall 2015, the university created the new Student Sustainability Working Group to support the culture of student innovation and collaboration, and ensure a cohesive approach to university sustainability. Each month the group brings students and staff together to share updates, solicit project feedback and brainstorm partnership opportunities.

Student interns at the university's UIC Heritage Garden, funded via the university's sustainability fee, recently released the last of the monarch butterflies they raised this summer and fall. The UIC Heritage Garden an ecology and sustainability-focused internship program that creates and maintains gardens on campus. Photo credit: UICheritagegarden.org

Supporting the university's zero waste action plan, volunteers and Sustainability Coordinator Program staff work with Ceremonies and Events to educate attendees about sorting their disposables. At a recent event with 4,000 participants, a desk bin-sized trash bag was remaining after composting and recycling everything else.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-Japan (UNESCO-Japan) prize for outstanding projects related to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was recently awarded to rootAbility for its Green Office Model, which began at Maastricht University in 2010 and now has 14 green offices at 14 universities in six countries. rootAbility was awarded $50,000 for the honor.

Kicking off the 2015 home football season, CU Athletics introduced new programs that encourage recycling, using alternative transportation and reducing water consumption. Bring Your Bottle Back to Life, a partnership with PepsiCo, gives away T-shirts made with 50 percent recycled plastic fibers each time the Colorado Buffaloes score a touchdown.

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The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is a membership association of colleges & universities, businesses, and nonprofits who are working together to lead the sustainability transformation. Learn more about AASHE's mission.